


Put Him On His Knees (Give Him Something To Believe In)

by whiteduck6



Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: BDSM, Bottom Cloud Strife, Coming In Pants, Crossdressing, Dry Humping, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femdom, Hair Kink, Mild Foot Fetish, Safewords, Service Submission, THIS IS NOT A PRO MILITARY FIC THOUGH IT'S JUST MENTIONED IN PASSING, a mild one i guess, artist aerith, as in covid lockdown, but really it's only out of convenience, ex-military cloud strife, florist aerith, lockdown - Freeform, oh boy, safeword checking, service sub cloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 17:42:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30075936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiteduck6/pseuds/whiteduck6
Summary: Cloud is losing his mind with the boredom and monotony of lockdown. Aerith suggests something new to shake things up.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife
Kudos: 15





	Put Him On His Knees (Give Him Something To Believe In)

**Author's Note:**

> yes i used a wap lyric as a title lol. im very bad at titles. 
> 
> for the purposes of this fic assume that they keep a shoes-stay-outside household. 
> 
> also... this is my first time writing anything of this particular brand of ~spice~ so hopefully I did okay lol.

Cloud was beginning to lose it. 

The world was eight months into a near-constant lockdown, and it didn't look to be ending anytime soon. He and his girlfriend, Aerith, had been living off of their savings and Aerith's freelance art, but she'd lost her job as a florist soon after lockdown began, and Cloud's budding career as a social worker had been quickly snuffed out when the pandemic had first burst to the forefront of everyone's minds. 

As a result, he and Aerith stayed in their apartment. A lot. 

Cloud wanted to continue visiting his mother as often as he could, seeing as how she lived alone, so that meant Aerith did most of the unnecessary trips outside. Cloud had taken to staring down at the cars he could see from the living room window just to remind himself there were other people out there. 

What bothered him most was the helplessness. When he'd been in the military, he could do things to make himself useful. When he'd retired from that and decided to become a social worker, the driving force behind that decision was the ability to help people. And now, with Aerith as the sole breadwinner for their little family, he found himself feeling more useless by the day. 

The apartment had been scrubbed within an inch of its life. Every piece of fabric that could be washed had been washed. He'd even taken up growing herbs in the living room window, just to have some indication that time was passing. 

But he was definitely starting to lose it. And that wouldn't do. 

Aerith, thankfully, was also starting to notice changes in Cloud's behavior. 

"You don't have to wash that," she had said one day when she noticed him scrubbing the tray that held their shoes in the kitchen sink. "It's just going to get dirty again." 

Cloud hadn't dignified that very reasonable statement with a response, but he'd felt Aerith's eyes on him as he'd finished his self-imposed task. 

He couldn't clean anything else. He couldn't leave and see his friends in person. He couldn't continue the constant cycle of bad news on the TV. 

These were all part of the reason that when Aerith brought it up, he said yes. 

\--

"You've been really stressed lately," she said one evening as they lay in bed together. She was reading a book and he was researching the best type of environment to grow basil in. 

Cloud didn't miss how she framed it as a statement. They both knew it was true, and there was no denying it. 

"Yeah," he said. "So what? Everyone's stressed." 

"That's true," Aerith said, tucking a bookmark into her book and putting it down. "But I have an idea." 

Cloud turned off his phone, sensing trouble. It wasn't unheard of for Aerith to have "ideas" that were wild and, in Cloud's opinion, usually unnecessary, but he made a point to always hear her out. 

"Have you ever heard of femdom?" 

He nearly choked on his own tongue. Aerith giggled a little as she patted him on the back while he attempted to catch his breath. 

"Excuse me?" he rasped, as soon as he'd recovered. 

"You know, power dynamics? In sex," she said, as if it needed clarifying. 

"Why?" he asked. He almost didn't want to know.

"You want something to do, right?" she said, shifting closer so she could look him in the eye. Her face was open but serious, so Cloud knew this was something she'd been thinking about for a long time.

"Yes . . ." this was making him more nervous the more she drew it out. 

"So I did some research, and femdom isn't all scary stuff, like whips and chains," she said in a rush, before taking a breath and composing herself again. He'd never seen her this jittery before. "And in my research, I found some stuff on service submission. Have you ever heard of that?" 

Cloud had seen his military buddies go down some Internet rabbit holes, but never this one. He shook his head mutely. 

"Okay, so, basically, it's a form of submission in which the sub - that would be you - just . . . Does things for the dom, which would be me. It doesn't have to be extreme or even involve sex, sometimes it's just doing cooking and cleaning around the house." She fidgeted with a loose thread on the comforter cover, but kept her eyes firmly on his. 

"That sounds like what I do now," Cloud said dumbly. _Obviously she has something that makes this different, or she wouldn't be pitching it, idiot._

"Yeah, I know," Aerith said, "but with service submission, there's a power dynamic. And . . . And please feel free to say no to this if this doesn't sound fun, actually, say no to any of this if it doesn't sound fun--" 

"Aerith," he said, "it's not going to shock me more at this point." 

"I think it would be really hot if you would wear a dress while we did that," she blurted out, her hands immediately flying to her face to cover her flaming blush that Cloud was certain was matched on his own face. 

"I don't think your dresses would fit me," Cloud said, kicking himself for how stupid that sounded as soon as the words were out of his mouth. 

"No, silly," Aerith giggled, "Maybe we could order one together, or if you'd prefer, I could order one and surprise you with it. But we don't have to - we don't have to do any of this." 

"Let me think about it," Cloud said, turning his bedside lamp off and hoping that signalled the end of the conversation. In the dark recesses of his mind, he would admit that the idea didn't sound bad - he trusted Aerith to do what was best for him, and the instant gratification that would come from knowing he was being good for her was a little too tempting. But he wasn't one for rash decisions, and this was the mother of all choices. 

"Okay," Aerith said easily, turning off her own lamp and fitting herself against him, wrapping her arm around his ribs. "It's okay if you don't want to. It's just an idea I had." 

Cloud turned to face her. "No, it's . . . A good idea . . ." he said, wincing at how weak he sounded. "I just . . . Need some time." 

"Of course," she said, cuddling in a little closer. "Goodnight, Cloud." 

"Goodnight, Aerith." 

\--

After several days of deliberation, argument with himself, and extensive research on the Internet, Cloud caught Aerith after she was finished with her art for the day, lurking outside her studio door until she opened it.

"Oh!" she jumped a little, immediately bursting into giggles afterwards. "Cloud! You scared me."

"Let's do it," he said, looking somewhere left of her eyes. 

She smiled mischievously. "Do what?" 

Cloud sighed. "You know what I'm talking about, Aerith, don't make me say it." 

"Come on, now," she said, taking a few steps forward, crowding him against the wall. "You could be talking about anything!" 

"Let's do the . . . Femdom thing," he said, his voice getting quieter and quieter until he was whispering by the last word, as if there was anyone around to hear them. 

"Awesome!" Aerith said, immediately backing up and clapping her hands together. "Okay, first things first - consent. Very important. Shall we use a traffic light system or did you have another idea?" 

Cloud was already well-versed in the traffic light system from his studies. "Traffic light works." 

"Okay, so, red, yellow, green, right?" Aerith said. She didn't say anything else, and it soon became clear that she was waiting for Cloud to verbally respond. 

"Green for keep going, yellow for wait, stop, talk about it, red for hard stop," Cloud said. His face felt like it was on fire, but Aerith seemed unbothered. 

"Great job!" she cooed, and Cloud tried not to think about how even that small piece of praise made him feel. "I see you've done your homework, mister. I'm going to need a verbal response from you before we do anything when we're actually in the scene, okay?" 

"Okay," he said. That seemed fair enough - he couldn't expect her to read his mind. 

"And do you want to do it in a dress?" 

This was the hard part. 

Cloud took a deep breath, preparing himself for what he was about to say. This had been the part of the suggestion that had been the hardest to come to a decision on - he'd spent hours over the past few days staring into Aerith's closet, running his fingers over her breezy dresses, their soft fabrics and delicate ribbon detailing a siren song. 

". . . Yes." 

"Are you sure?" Aerith asked. "You can just wear your normal clothes, if you want." 

"No, I'm sure," he said, this time trying to inject some of that sureness into his voice. "I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and . . . I do want to. Wear a dress." 

He was certain he couldn't get any more embarrassed, but at the same time, he was . . . Looking forward to it. It was, again, that sense of trust that he was placing in Aerith, to know what was best for him. He found he didn't entirely mind giving up control to her. 

"And do you want to pick it out with me or should I surprise you?" Aerith asked, still smiling softly, disarmingly. 

"Surprise me," Cloud said, fidgeting with a loose thread on his shirt just so he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. 

"Cloud?" she asked, taking a step closer to him again. Their height difference was so drastic that he barely had to look up to look her in the face when she tilted his chin away from his chest. Her eyes were sparkling, but not in a mischievous or amused way like they often were. She seemed . . . Proud, and embers warmed under his ribs at the idea that he'd pleased her.

"Thanks," she said, never taking her eyes off his. "For agreeing to this. I know you'll be a good boy for me." 

Cloud bit back a whimper as she skipped off to get her computer, presumably for dress shopping. 

\--

Several weeks later, when a package arrived in the mail that Aerith wouldn't let him look at, Cloud knew it was time. Aerith bundled up the package in her arms and hurried back to her studio, only popping her head back out to double-check if Cloud was absolutely certain he still wanted to do this. Despite himself, there was a twinge of excitement in his gut when she disappeared back into her room, calling through the door that he should be ready in their room in fifteen minutes. 

Cloud had no idea what she meant by "ready," so he plonked himself down on their bed and waited for Aerith to show. Nervous sweat pricked at his palms and he couldn't sit still - always changing positions, or adjusting the comforter on their bed, or wiping specks of dust off his bedside table. 

After what seemed like too long and not long enough, Aerith knocked gently on the door. Cloud jerked a little, shaking his head to try to physically shake out the anxious thoughts. "Come in." 

She breezed in, a lump of dark blue cloth in her hands. "You ready?" 

He nodded. 

"You remember your safewords?"

"Green for keep going, yellow for stop and talk about it, red for hard stop." 

"Good boy," she said, handing him the bundle. It was incredibly soft, but Cloud resisted the urge to shake it out and see what it looked like. "Go ahead and put this on - keep your underwear on, too." 

Cloud flushed a little at how easily she said that, but he ducked into their ensuite to change. He left his own clothes - just jeans and a t-shirt - folded on the sink, and slipped the garment Aerith had chosen over his head. He delayed it as much as he could, nervous about what he would think when he saw himself, but at the last minute, he turned and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror - just to make sure he had it on straight, he told himself. Not out of curiosity. 

It was a summery thing, with a dipping v in the neck like Aerith's favorite pink sundress. The straps were delicate, no wider than his pinky finger, settling themselves in the dips of his shoulders like they belonged there. The feeling of his legs touching each other was . . . Unusual, to say the least, but the silky-soft material of it soothed his fraying nerves. 

_Aerith's going to like this,_ he thought, spinning in the mirror once before catching himself and stilling. 

He took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door. 

Aerith was sitting on his side of the bed, apparently eagerly waiting. She gasped when she saw him, and he almost winced before she rushed over to him, running her small hands over his chest, singing her praises. 

"Oh, it fits you so well!" she said, "it's so flattering! It took me a while to find one I liked, and for a while I considered making one, but I finally found this one on a vintage site and it just blew me away, and I knew you had to have it! You're so beautiful like this, Cloud!" 

Cloud bit his lip at her last comment, the warmth of endorphins racing through his shoulders and arms all the way into the tips of his fingers. 

"Thanks," he said quietly. Aerith arched an eyebrow. 

"Speak up when addressing me," she said, the first hint of domination she'd shown since pitching the idea. "And . . . Call me Miss Aerith." 

"Thank you," he said, a little louder. It was . . . Soothing to hand the reins over to someone, he was finding. He no longer had to be the person making all the decisions for their household, he could let Aerith take over for a while. He could almost physically feel the weight lifting from his shoulders. 

"Wait, colour? Sorry, I should have checked to see if calling me a title was okay--" Aerith panicked, the gleam of superiority fading from her eyes as she worried over Cloud. 

"Green," he said gently, wrapping an arm around her softly. "It's okay." 

"Okay," she said, releasing a relieved breath. "Now . . . Make me something to eat. I'm hungry." 

She walked out of the room, her head held high as Cloud followed her into the living room. She settled herself down on their couch, staring at Cloud down her nose as much as she could with the height difference. "Make me some pasta," she said, "with red sauce. The curly pasta." 

"Yes, Miss Aerith," Cloud said, beginning to fall into his role a little more. He got the supplies out from the cupboards, quickly making up the meal - one of Aerith's favorites. In a few minutes, he set a steaming plate of pasta down on the table, but Aerith didn't make a move towards it. 

"I'm eating on the couch today," she said, "bring it here." 

Cloud obeyed, moving to sit beside her, but she blocked the couch with her arm. 

"On the floor," she said, glancing to the patch of carpet beside her, "where my servant boys sit." 

Cloud clenched his jaw so tight he was worried he might crack a tooth as he dropped to his knees faster than either of them expected. Aerith ran her fingers through his hair and a chill ran down his spine as he leaned into the touch, her nails gently scraping along his scalp. She was silent for a few moments, evidently taking a bite, because she soon spoke up. 

"Delicious as always," she said, "you're so good to me." 

If it had been possible for a human to purr, Cloud was certain he would have started. His thoughts started to jumble, becoming slippery and harder to stick together as Aerith continued to stroke his hair and eat her dinner. After some time, he was broken from his haze at the unpleasant sound of cutlery scraping across the plate, but Aerith hadn't told him to move, so he didn't move. 

"Come here," she said, spreading her feet apart and gesturing to the space between them. Cloud shuffled over while remaining on his knees, his head at eye level with her belly. Aerith glanced down at him. 

"Colour?" 

"Green," he breathed, staring at her long, elegant index finger as she dragged it through the sauce that was left on the plate. She brought it to his mouth.

"Open." 

At her command, he opened his mouth and she pressed her finger inside, letting him taste the sauce of the meal he'd cooked for her. He was more than familiar with the taste - they'd eaten enough of this meal since lockdown started - but from Aerith's fingers, it was like ambrosia. He sucked at her finger far longer than was necessary, losing himself in the simple action as her other hand caressed his face. 

"Hm, what's this?" She finally said, withdrawing her finger from his mouth. He chased after it with a whine, but she pressed her fingers to his forehead and pushed him back down to a kneel. "You've gotten hard? Just from sucking on my fingers?" 

She pressed the ball of her foot into his cock, and Cloud couldn't hold back the whimpering groan that crawled between his teeth at her touch. _When had that happened?_ He hadn't even registered his body reacting like that. 

"What a naughty boy," she said, grinding her foot down again and leaving him to buck up into her touch helplessly. 

"M-Miss Aerith, please," he begged, not sure where he was going with this even as he said it, but knowing he needed _more_ of something, whatever she was doing. 

"Please what?" she asked, wrapping her fingers in her hair and forcing him to look into her eyes. Her other hand snuck down under his dress and rubbed at a nipple, leaving his body jerking spastically between one stimulation and another. 

"Please, I-I need," he said, praying that she wouldn't make him say it. "I need to come." 

"Hmm," she said, "do you, now? I hadn't noticed." 

She glanced away from him for a moment, her eyes casting back to the plate, abandoned on the couch beside her. She removed her hand from Cloud's hair to tuck a lock of her own behind her ear, and he fell forward, his hands gripping her thighs as tightly as he dared as she continued to rub his cock through his dress, leaving him to pant breathlessly into her inner thigh. 

"Please, Miss Aerith," he said, "I-I really need it--I--I'm going to--" 

Immediately, her foot withdrew, and a long, keening whine fell from Cloud's mouth as he nearly climbed up her to try to get the stimulation back. She shoved him back down to the ground, the faint hint of carpet burn on his knees a minor inconvenience if it meant Aerith would consider letting him come. 

"You can come," she said, "but you'll come on my leg, or not at all." 

He must have given her a very confused look - he knew he could barely parse the words together in his own head, so he knew he couldn't have looked like he comprehended everything she said. As if to demonstrate, she slid her foot out further on the carpet, offering her shin but leaving the sole of her foot planted firmly on the ground. 

Cloud moistened his lips. It was hardly even a decision at this point. He shuffled closer to her, pressing his aching cock onto her smooth shin. 

"Cloud," Aerith said, tilting his chin up to look at her as soon as he was within range. "Colour?"

"Green," he breathed out, rubbing frantically against her leg. She combed through his hair again with one of her hands, and he dropped his head to her thigh, pillowing it on the soft flesh as he humped her leg, his fingers grasping at her hips like he might find some purchase there. 

He swallowed dryly, barely any moisture left in his mouth. "I'm going to come, Miss Aerith," he choked out, the fire in his lower belly condensing into a white-hot coal. 

"That's okay," Aerith said, running her other hand over his exposed shoulder blade. He could smell her body lotion, floral and sweet, and she gently dug her nails into his back right as she spoke again. 

"Good boy." 

And he was coming, rutting in jittery movements against her leg as he came into the underwear, into the dress, like someone with no control. He vaguely remembered moaning out some sort of thanks as he finished, and Aerith leaning forward to press a kiss to the crown of his head, but the minutes after that were a floating haze where the only two things in the world were him and Aerith. 

When he came back around, Aerith was coaxing a straw between his lips. "Take a drink," she said, "you'll feel better." He vaguely registered that he was cradled in her arms, and part of him wanted to move, to try and keep his weight off of her, but the rest of him felt so safe and so content that moving seemed a herculean task. 

He sipped at the straw - watermelon juice, Aerith's favorite and the only juice they regularly stocked in the house. The sweet exploded across his tongue as the cool drink brought the concept of moisture back to his throat, and slowly his head started to clear. 

"And have some of this," she said, pushing something into his mouth. It was a piece of milk chocolate, he registered as it started to melt on his tongue, and he let it dissolve in his mouth contentedly as Aerith petted his hair, whispering in his ear how good he'd been for her, how he'd followed every instruction perfectly, how he'd been the best sub ever. 

By the time he could move his extremities again, the sun had already set, leaving the living room in darkness. Aerith must have felt him stirring, because she released her grasp on him a little as he attempted to sit up. 

"Whoa, there," she said, standing up with him, keeping her hands on his arms to steady him as he wobbled slightly. "You alright? How're you feeling?" 

Cloud did an internal once-over. ". . . Really good, actually. Relaxed. But . . ." he shifted a little, grimacing as he was reminded of the fact that he'd come in his pants not an hour earlier. "A little . . . Gross." 

"Yeah, let's go hop in a bath," Aerith laughed, wrapping her arms around one of his and leading him to the bathroom. She started running a bath, pouring what Cloud would consider to be a copious amount of bubble bath in, making sure Cloud got in okay before hopping in herself and settling herself behind him. 

"Did you like that?" she asked as she washed his hair, massaging shampoo into his scalp. Cloud didn't hesitate with his answer. 

"Yeah," he said. "I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did. It was . . . Relaxing." 

"Really?" Cloud turned around to see that Aerith's face had split into a smile. "That's so great to hear. We don't have to do it again, of course, but--" 

"We can do it again," he said, turning around to hide his own faint grin. "It was fun." 

"Awesome," she said, wrapping her arms around his chest. "I'm so glad to hear it. I had fun, too." 

Cloud relaxed back into her, feeling less tense than he had in months.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> I did research where I thought it was necessary but I won't claim to be a bdsm expert so if you know something better than I do, I'm very open to constructive criticism. I'm not claiming this is a perfect example of bdsm lol - it's just these two messing around with it for the first time. Please dont take bdsm advice from fanfiction haha. 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoyed <3


End file.
